


Love Unravels Me

by lazarus_girl



Series: Saudade Series [9]
Category: Skins (UK)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-28
Updated: 2012-12-28
Packaged: 2017-11-22 16:51:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/612048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazarus_girl/pseuds/lazarus_girl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i> “Maybe they need more than love now.”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love Unravels Me

**Author's Note:**

> Future Fic. Follows Gen 2 canon. Written for [15genres1prompt](http://15genres1prompt.livejournal.com). Genre: Character study/Introspection. Prompt: Lost. Inspired by the Mindy Gledhill song [‘Hard’](http://youtu.be/WRnUxmSoc-E). Thank you to [@cargoes](http://cargoes.tumblr.com/) for her beta skills and cheerleading.

_“Where the fuck are you going?!”_

_“Anywhere but here!”_

_“We’re not finished Naomi! It’s not going to disappear if you don’t talk about it! You never learn!”_

_“Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare start raking all that up!”_

_“It’s the same shit with you, all the fucking time!”_

_“Oh fuck this! I can’t do this Emily. I just can’t.”_

_“That’s it Naomi, walk away! That’s your answer to everything!”_

_“Yeah. Yeah it is. Maybe I should just fucking stay away then!”_

She hasn’t been this angry in a long time. Every fibre of her being feels like it’s pulsing with rage. Her hands are shaking; adrenaline propelling her forward as she pounds the pavement, battered by the wind and the rain on a November afternoon. The worst thing isn’t the anger. No, the worst thing is she can’t even remember why they started arguing in the first place. One minute, she was stood in the half-painted living room of their overpriced shoebox of a flat, surrounded by cardboard boxes that seemed to be multiplying by the second, and the next , they were yelling – screaming – at each other, and she’d picked up her coat and left. Slamming the door off its hinges, she refused to turn back when Emily called after her.

Now, she’s stood in the middle of God knows where, hugging herself against the cold, and feeling like shit. She takes a long breath out, leaning against the shutters of a corner shop, buffeted by people coming in and out, getting dirty looks from women with pushchairs and even dirtier ones from heavily made up girls chewing gum and lads in baseball caps with fake diamond studs in their ears.

She hates it, absolutely hates it when she and Emily argue. It doesn’t happen often, not anymore, because she tries to not bottle up her feelings after the watershed-turned-clusterfuck that was Sophia Moore. If she’s honest with herself, it’s been building for a while, bubbling under the surface, in between good mornings, good nights and all the little things that add up to being together that no one ever really talks about. It gets heated so quickly because they love each other, a little too much sometimes.

They’re working toward everything they’ve ever wanted. She _has_ everything she could want. She got the girl, the nice flat, and a job that’s hers for the taking. Jesus, they even have a dog, which everyone knows is one step away from having a child. Audrey, a ridiculously sweet and loyal Jack Russell puppy, _is_ their baby really, and gets spoilt rotten. Emily rescued her from the street on a day much like this one, fully intending to take to a shelter, but they’ve never managed to get her there and now they’ve grown far too attached. Having all that is lovely, wonderful, and far beyond her imaginings of her adult life in the surliest of her teenage years, but the truth is, it’s all a bit too much. Like everything else, it’s been accelerated, and there’s only one thing she’s ever really wanted, and that’s Emily. They could be penniless and dossing under a park bench for all she cares. Emily’s enough, everything else is just the icing on an already perfectly baked cake, but whenever she tries to explain that, she gets tongue-tied and frustrated, and her so-called intelligence and university education count for nothing.

Imagining their life together and living that life are two very different things.

They’re so busy, she’s beginning to forget what Emily looks like. What it’s like to _be_ with her even. Moments she used to take for granted, luxuriate in, are snatched here and there, on the way to going somewhere or doing something else. Emily’s become a shape in her bed, knackered after working late. A note on the fridge, hastily scrawled. A text on a screen with xx’s for kisses. They’ve lost each other somewhere, and she doesn’t even know how, why or even when it happened. She wants the world to stop. Just for a day or three. Quiet, perfect, and still like those early mornings in her mum’s flat when they were seventeen, and she’d watch Emily sleep, stroking her hair until she couldn’t wait any longer for her to open her eyes, so she’d kiss her awake. Then, and only then, had the day really begun.

She misses that like she misses Bristol, Her mum and Kieran, Katie, Cook, and even Emily’s mum. It all feels so very far away. They feel so very far away, and she’s got no real right to complain since they’re in Brixton because of her anyway. Emily left the job and the life they loved in Manchester just for her. She just uprooted herself, without any real hesitation. It still astounds her that Emily can trust her to that degree. A small part of her still feels unworthy of it. They’ve barely been here five minutes and she already knows Emily will resent her for it. That Manchester will come back to haunt her and be used as a weapon just like Sophia is.

Her phone buzzes again her coat pocket, just like it has been since she left the flat. She wonders if it’s Emily on the other end and how many messages she’s got waiting on voicemail, or if it’s someone else entirely. Her fingers close around the shape, feeling it through the material, but she’s too afraid to answer, just in case she doesn’t like what she’ll hear. She sighs heavily as she looks down the street, wondering how the hell she’s going to make it back to Emily or even if she should go at all. Emily’s suffered enough because of her selfishness and lack of emotional maturity. Maybe they need more than love now. She’s never really understood the idea that loving someone completely, with your entire heart is somehow short of the mark, but it feels like that way now. Maybe there _is_ a limit to it or maybe that’s just regret talking. It feels like she’s not communicating the sheer depth of everything she carries inside of her, but there’s no real way she could either, short of cracking open her chest and showing Emily the heart that pumps away steadily, solely for her.

A cigarette, that’s what she needs. Whenever she’s had important decisions to make like telling Emily how she truly felt; asking her out properly for the first time; what uni she should go to; whether she should take this or that job; what kind of house they’ll buy and where it’ll be; she always smokes a cigarette. Nine times out of ten, the moment it’s smoked down to the filter, she has her answer, no matter how difficult the question. As she retrieves the crumpled pack from her pocket, and taps out the last cigarette, it looks too short a time span to consider everything she has to. If she’s going back to Emily, she has to tell her another set of truths. They’re different truths from those she told all those years ago in Freddie’s shed, but no less difficult to say out loud.

The first drag is too long, too hard, and too telling. She exhales, slow and steady, feeling begin to descend.

She gets it now. She gets why people just disappear off the face of the earth. Why you hear that people just up and left one day without any kind warning. Standing on a street corner in the rain, smoking her last cigarette, she finally understands why her father upped and left before he even had the chance to be any kind of father to her. Life just gets too much. The weight of it, and the pressure of it. All that hope and expectation. She doesn’t want to fail Emily again, but she feels perilously close to doing it; within a hair’s breath of losing everything; wasting opportunities and squandering potential. Maybe she always has been. She’s floundering in the sea of it all, and for the first time in her life, it doesn’t feel like Emily can rescue her.

With a sigh, she flicks away the cigarette, stubbing it out with the toe of her shoe. The conclusion she’s been terrified to reach is there, set plain in her mind. It seems obvious now it’s there, ridiculously so. It’s then that she catches sight of the tattoo on the inside of her right wrist: ‘Be brave’ written in Emily’s handwriting. She got it when she was eighteen, the day after Freddie’s funeral. It felt like a good thing to do. A mantra. A reminder. A touch stone. She touches it now, and all she can think of is Emily. All she can think of is making it right. She can’t turn her back. She can’t do it because she’s _not_ her father.

She turns back the way she came, running full pelt in the hope that she’ll turn the right way and somehow end up in the right place. It takes a while, phone ringing incessantly as she goes. Disoriented, she has to double back a few times, because things look so different when you’re walking along compared to when you’re sitting in a car being driven the very same route.

By the time she turns into their street, squeezing through the half open door to the flat block, she’s soaked to the skin, and her lungs are burning, screaming for air as she runs up the stairs two a time, cursing that they live on the sixth floor and the lift is out of order. She calls for Emily, louder and louder the higher she gets, doubling over, breathless, when she reaches the top. Fumbling with her keys, she almost collapses as soon as she’s through the door, throwing down her keys. Audrey skitters across the floor to her, barking away excitedly. She doesn’t have the heart to glare at her to be quiet.

“Naomi is that you?” Emily calls, and she doesn’t know what to say, afraid to announce herself, but equally afraid not to.

Instead, she stands completely still, watching Audrey run around while she just drips water on to their whitewashed floorboards, until she remembers to shrug off her coat, letting it drop, so she’s just left shivering in a t-shirt, jeans and converse that have let in water. She feels no warmer, and infinitely worse otherwise.

“Naomi?” she repeats, louder, and Naomi can hear the edge of fear in her voice.

Suddenly, a door opens, and Audrey runs toward it, going inside the room at the exact moment Emily emerges, and Naomi’s stomach drops. Her eyes are puffy and red from crying, and she looks so small and lost in too-cold to wear summer dress, ballet flats and oversized cardigan.

“Jesus, look at the state of you!” she exclaims, dropping the empty cardboard box she’s carrying and rushing to her immediately. “The fuck have you been?!” she asks, looking her up and down, full of concern. “I’ve been calling you for ages, going fucking mental. I thought something happened!” her voice strains as she carries on, still raw from all the shouting before. “Don’t you fucking do that to me again!” she pushes her in the chest, but there’s no real force behind it.

“I just … I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you,” Naomi reaches, tentatively touching Emily’s cheek. “I needed to get out for a bit. To think.”

Emily steps back, fearful. Naomi can see the panic rising in her. “W-Why?”

“This,” she gestures around her. “All this.”

“You don’t want to live here? You don’t like it? You don’t want,” something seems to dawn on Emily then, and the colour slowly drains out of her. “It’s me, isn’t it?”

Naomi feels sick.

“No, no, Ems!” she holds up her hands, “No, Jesus!” she puffs out a breath, struggling to find the right words. “No. It’s not you,” she swallows hard, dangerously close to saying ‘it’s me,’ and bringing to life a nightmare she’s buried in the dimmest corner of her mind since she was seventeen with barely the faintest grasp of how much she loved the girl in front of her.

“What?” Emily’s getting angry now, and this territory is feeling all-too well trodden.

“Come here,” she says, quietly, taking Emily’s hands carefully in her own and leading her to their sofa, newly unwrapped. “I know I brought us here, I made you leave everything, and – ”

“You didn’t make me. I came because I wanted to, because I love you. Is that what this is about?”

“Yes. No,” she sighs, frustrated with herself. “I just … I just miss you.”

“I haven’t gone anywhere.”

Emily’s right, of course she’s right. In theory, things are no different to Manchester, but in practice, they’re poles apart.

“I … I know, but it feels like I lost you somewhere. I miss being with you. Just being together. We’re so busy, and I don’t even know if I’m doing the right thing, and I’ve dragged you all this way,” she shakes her head, angry at the tears springing up, hot, without warning. “It might be for nothing. I don’t know how to do all of this. I feel like I can’t breathe Ems. It’s too much. I just want us back, I just to be Naomi and Emily again.”

She’s been too focussed on her little speech to really take in how Emily’s responding to it. There’s a familiar strangled little sob, and then Emily’s arms are around her neck, holding her tight. Startled, she stiffens against her, not sure what it means or how to react. She swallows hard, and hears herself saying ‘sorry’ in a small, quiet voice, because it’s her natural response. She’ll be forever saying sorry for something or other. Their past is littered with mistakes that are mostly hers.

“Babe,” Emily says, soft and sincere, brushing away her tears, and it feels like the greatest relief. “Why did you keep this all to yourself?” she continues, pulling back a little, threading her arms loosely around Naomi’s neck. “You know I hate that.”

“Because, I’m terrified of ruining everything,” she replies, simply, without hesitation, because it’s true. “And, I have already. You were happy.”

Emily holds her gaze, full of sincerity as she speaks. “No, no you haven’t. You scared me, made me angry before, but you haven’t ruined anything. I promise you. And, just so you know, I am happy. I’m happy because I’m with you.”

“You’re still mad at me though, aren’t you?”

“A little bit, because I hoped you’d trust me enough to tell me anything.”

“I do,” she sniffs back tears. “I really do. I have everything I’ve ever wanted, and more, and that’s because of you. I’m terrified of losing it all. Of losing you … again.”

There it is. The four words that have been on the tip of her tongue in every argument since Freddie’s shed. She pulls away from Emily completely, needing the single cushion of space between them.

“I feel like, I’m not enough, like I can never _be_ enough because I just fuck things up and hurt you all the time,” she laughs hollowly. “Look what I did today, just to save myself from telling you the truth. It’s pathetic. You’re right, I never learn. You’re always right Emily. You deserve better,” she only just about chokes out the better, because it hurts even more to say than it does to feel.

“Look at me,” Emily says, barely above a whisper. “Naomi, _look_ at me.”

She’s loathe to, because she can feel Emily’s eyes on her, and hear something that sounds a lot like disappointment in her voice.

“Please?”

That’s what does it, because Emily sounds so completely broken, and it sends her into a panic head snapping up before she realises.

Emily closes the distance between them, licking her lips before she speaks. “You’re enough, Naomi. When will you realise how much I fucking adore you, hmm? When will you get it in to your head that I don’t care if you’re not this perfect human being all the time? You’re perfect to me.”

“I’m not,” she shakes her head, a hand flying up to her mouth when another sob escapes. “I’m not.”

“Yes,” Emily assures. “Yes you are. You’re amazing,” she continues, taking Naomi’s hands once more and squeezing tightly. “You’re bright and brilliant and passionate about everything. You feel too much and you think too much, and you’re far too hard on yourself.”

She has no answer to that, because, well, Emily’s right.

“Why do you even love me?”

That little thought was meant to stay firmly in her head, but it escapes out of her mouth in the exhale of a shuddering breath. It’s something else that’s been plaguing her for years, eating away at her in the darkest of moments when she finds herself inexplicably awake at night, churning things over. Things like Sophia, wishing she could undo it and fix everything for the three of them, because even now, things still feel not quite right and just a little broken, even if they look right. Wishing there were three of them at all.

“Because I can’t _not_ love you. I don’t know how to.”

It’s such a simple, honest reply, that mirrors her own feelings completely, and she doesn’t know why she’s so shocked by it, because Emily would never answer any other way. Emily loves her so completely in spite of everything she does to make herself unlovable. Letting out a long breath she hadn’t realised she was holding, she swipes at her face, clearing away tears. There are a hundred things she wants to say, most of them contain the words ‘love,’ but love feels too small a word now. Too slight a feeling. What they have is something else. Something bigger. Something better, that renders her speechless.

“I know you feel the same. I’ve always known that. Even in the worst of it, after Sophia, I knew, Naomi,” Emily looks her straight in the eyes, pausing to let everything she’s saying sink in. “You have to stop punishing yourself. Please, please promise me, because if you keep doing it, then we’ll never be able to move on. She’ll always be there, but you have to let it go. I have.”

“You have?”

“Yes,” Emily nods. “And, I forgive you, just in case you needed reminding.”

These words aren’t new ones, Emily’s said that to her before, but it feels different this time, because she’s actually accepted as truth instead of something Emily thinks she wants to hear.

“Want to know something else?”

“What?” she asks, cautious, watching Emily intently.

“It’s fucking scary, going after things, being a grown-up, and doing things properly, and I’ve felt the same way for ages.”

She just laughs now, genuinely, because Emily always looks so together, all dressed up in her pencil skirts and kitten heels as the cutest little PR office girl she’s ever seen. In comparison, she feels like a complete and utter fraud, running off to the newspaper every day, little more than a photocopying dogsbody.

“This is why you need to tell me what’s going on in that pretty little head of yours, babe,” Emily smiles a little, reaching forward to tap at Naomi’s temple.

“I’m sorry,” she says, again, hating how inadequate a reply it is. She leans over to kiss Emily’s cheek. Emily’s hand clasps around Naomi’s wrist, thumb tracing around her tattoo before letting go again.

“It’s OK. Everything’s going to be OK. We can do this. We can have this life, Naomi. The flat, the job. Everything. But, we can only do it if we do it together. Trust me. Just trust me. OK? You’re braver than you think.”

She nods, feeling a tear steak down her face as she remembers the tattoo, remembering the lake and everything that came before. She surges forward, her lips crushing hard against Emily’s in a desperate kiss. Emily lets out a small gasp, but immediately relaxes, grabbing at the back of her t-shirt, pressing them both into the sofa. She’s missed this more than anything, and she moans into Emily’s mouth as she deepens the kiss. Here, with Emily’s arms around her, bodies fitting together as perfectly as they always have, there’s nothing she has to hide; there’s nothing she _wants_ to hide. She breaks the kiss, bringing a hand up to cradle Emily’s face, gazing into her eyes, searching her as she watches a smile curve to full brightness on Emily’s lips. Then, she kisses her again, much more gently, soft and lingering, barely brushing sometimes, like Emily loves to be kissed, hoping that it says enough by saying all the things there aren’t words for.


End file.
